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There's talk of the network losing tons of money. Turns out the rumor of Chris Berman quitting might not be true (unfortunately), but there are some who think that was about money.

Now they have brought back Larry Biel? He was awful in his first go-round, and he still just has that one tired "Aloha means goodbye" home run catch phrase. I don't blame him for returning from whatever distant outpost employed him in recent years, but he is still awful.

I thought they were getting better with Skip Bayless leaving. Biel isn't as bad as Skip, but he sure isn't good.

DallasDiehard wrote:There's talk of the network losing tons of money. Turns out the rumor of Chris Berman quitting might not be true (unfortunately), but there are some who think that was about money.

Now they have brought back Larry Biel? He was awful in his first go-round, and he still just has that one tired "Aloha means goodbye" home run catch phrase. I don't blame him for returning from whatever distant outpost employed him in recent years, but he is still awful.

I thought they were getting better with Skip Bayless leaving. Biel isn't as bad as Skip, but he sure isn't good.

They have lost 8 million subscribers and expect to lose more. To cut costs, they have laid off a lot of rank and file employees. Furthermore, they have reduced costs by getting rid of a lot of expensive talent: Bayless, Cowherd, Simmons, Berman, Olbermann to name a few. If Tom Jackson hadn't retired, Trent Dilfer would have been gone.

They need to get rid of all those terrible shows like First Take, Around the Horn, His & Hers, etc. Just do Sportscenter and reruns of 30 for 30s and classic games to save costs. The gravy train has been derailed

When's the last time anybody watched Sportscenter?

I'm OK with Around the Horn, but you're right about the others.

I like the E:60 shows, too. Those usually are pretty good.

Is Morris the Cat related to Oscar?

smusic 00 wrote:When's the last time anybody watched Sportscenter?

I'm willing to leave SC on in the background, but that His & Hers, First Take, etc. stuff is awful.

The olympics weren't quite as successful as NBC would have hoped:

http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/2016-ol ... 201843200/

Bottom line is people aren't watching TV as much anymore. ESPN has already started to feel the hit.

I suspect where this is going to matter in the coming years is this whole 'college athletics is a business' idea.

Ya we tuned out, mainly due to the horrible cut-backs from NBC. I wanted to watch sports not lifetime movies. It really ended and switched to bbc vpn after they split the women's all-around or individuals (can't remember) into two. I'm not going to stay up that late to watch the ending. I ended up reading the results and going to sleep while they still had swimming on, learned who won the rest of the swimming events the next day. Didn't even watch friday/ saturday expect the tail end of the closing

leopold wrote:The olympics weren't quite as successful as NBC would have hoped:

http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/2016-ol ... 201843200/

Bottom line is people aren't watching TV as much anymore. ESPN has already started to feel the hit.

I suspect where this is going to matter in the coming years is this whole 'college athletics is a business' idea.

Depends on your definition of TV. Cable subscriptions are way down accounting for most of the loss of people watching TV. One really needs to know what the streaming stats might be. The conventional fan sitting in a chair all afternoon watching a game is being replaced with people out doing things and keeping touch with their iphone aps and streams.

PoconoPony wrote:

leopold wrote:The olympics weren't quite as successful as NBC would have hoped:

http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/2016-ol ... 201843200/

Bottom line is people aren't watching TV as much anymore. ESPN has already started to feel the hit.

I suspect where this is going to matter in the coming years is this whole 'college athletics is a business' idea.

Depends on your definition of TV. Cable subscriptions are way down accounting for most of the loss of people watching TV. One really needs to know what the streaming stats might be. The conventional fan sitting in a chair all afternoon watching a game is being replaced with people out doing things and keeping touch with their iphone aps and streams.

One thing to consider is the fact that you don't have to completely cut the cord to impact revenue models. This weekend, my cable company (Frontier [Mis]Communication) finally made me so mad that I agreed to switch to Comcrap. Although I ended up with a "Full subscription" with Comcrap, it was part of my promotional package.

Once it expires, I will probably downgrade to "basic" cable and use online streaming for sports.

also - bottom line is that Olympic sports are basically boring. Wouldn't be surprised if they got less coverage going forward. Most of them are like watching paint dry.

they need to stop paying for LHN or all other crap